In Search of the Big Bamboo

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McMillan wrote from her experience in her second novel, How Stella Got Her Groove Back. The book was recently transformed into a successful feature film starring Angela Bassett as Stella and Taye Diggs as a 20-year-old Jamaican hunk named Winston Shakespeare. Stella bumps into Winston one morning at her resort and he suggests that they meet at the pajama party to be held later that evening in the hotel. A reluctant Stella shows up in a modest negligee, but she livens up after the first slow dance. Later, Stella seems to cop a feel of Winston's bamboo in a swimming pool. Her suspicions confirmed, she embarks on a passionate affair that ends with marriage in sight by the time the credits roll.

Stella's pajama party seduction is not unusual. In both Barbados and Jamaica, vacationers are seduced on the dance floor. After several draughts of rum punch and a few tokes of ganja, the sex tourist is ready for a "bump and wine"—a crotch-to-crotch pantomime performed in time to the latest soca or reggae rhythm. Much of the foreplay that takes place on Caribbean dance floors could not be shown on American television.

The beach boy is notorious for his lack of commitment to women. If a more appealing woman shows an interest in him, he turns his attentions to her. But many sex tourists are just as adventurous, or fickle: It is not uncommon to see a woman at a nightclub abandon her young companion for another local who has caught her fancy—perhaps someone she met while her escort was getting drinks from the bar. This often provokes a verbal altercation, especially if the men do not know each other, but the outhustled hustler usually backs off. Soon, he will be back on the dance floor, in search of another unattached tourist.

Despite McMillan's endorsement, not every West Indian is charmed by the beach boys' philandering ways. Many in Jamaica and Barbados frown upon interracial liaisons and public displays of affection. Older residents, and some members of the clergy, condemn the culture of casual sex that makes sex tourism possible in the first place. But many Caribbean men, especially workers in the tourist trade, privately envy the young hustlers. I have heard taxi drivers, security guards, and hotel waiters ponder the glamorous life of the hustler. "If only I was younger," they say. Local women, on the other hand, tend to reserve their hostility for the tourist women, whom they accuse of preying on their young men, leading them astray.

Like many West Indian males, beach boys and rent-a-dreads like to exercise what they consider a husband's authority over their temporary girlfriends. The men determine when and how to have sex, what restaurants and bars and nightclubs to patronize, what sights are worth taking in. First-time visitors generally acquiesce. But for sexually sophisticated women already familiar with the Caribbean, the perquisites of masculine control wear thin after a day or two. Few of these young men have ever been off the island; most never finished high school. When conversation runs aground, their elaborate flattery can lose much of its charm, and the woman may find herself paying for tiresome company. At this point, the terms of the relationship may be renegotiated—just the sex, please—or the man may be given his walking papers.

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